There's no need for any sort of pad with an optical mouse. Any flat surface works well.

Hm, not my experience with optical mice. I'm not always certain exactly why I need a pad with mine ... not sure if it's the texture or the color of the surface ... but there are definitely some flat surfaces that require the addition of a pad in order to prevent cursor skipping or whatever you want to call it. Very annoying!

Quote:

There's the old story of the first mice at Xerox PARC, where the engineers would use alcohol sprays to clean the dirt from the mouse ball. However, this would statically charge the mouse ball, so it would attract even more cruft. So the engineers would reach for the alcohol spray more frequently. Eventually, the mouse would need alcohol so often that it would be declared "drunk", and had to go in an ultrasonic bath to remove the static charge - "rehab".